Facing Beilein-coached Michigan can hurt, but UConn wants to return the favor

By Neill Ostrout, STAFF WRITER

Published 6:09 pm, Saturday, January 16, 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Facing a John Beilein basketball team is kind of like going through root canal. There's probably going to be a lot of sweating and/or swearing, it's probably going to hurt, and you won't always feel good about it after the experience.

Whether it's a trapping 1-3-1 zone defense or an offense that seems to put six shooters on the floor at once, Beilein's teams can sometimes frustrate the opposition at both ends of the court.

UConn coach Jim Calhoun saw it from afar when Beilein coached at Canisius, got his first taste of it live when he moved onto Richmond, and got a couple of doses a year while Beilein was at West Virginia.

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On the verge of facing Beilein's Michigan team for the second year in a row, Calhoun didn't spend much time dissecting the Wolverines' ho-hum start or 9-7 record. Heading into this afternoon's matchup, Calhoun was fretting over the difficulty of facing an unusual style. But having faced Beilein before, not to mention a few other differing coaching styles in his 38 years in college basketball, Calhoun knows his 15th-ranked Huskies can be a handful, too.

"It's a hard matchup for us," Calhoun said before practice Saturday at Crisler Arena. "But why don't we turn it into a harder matchup for them? That's what we really talked to the kids about."

Michigan has had some difficulty rebounding the ball this season. UConn's starting frontcourt will feature players 6-foot-11 (Ater Majok), 6-9 (Alex Oriakhi) and 6-9 (Stanley Robinson), with a 6-10 senior (Gavin Edwards) ready to enter the game at a second's notice.

It's seemingly a good setup for the Huskies to control the glass, though for some reason they haven't been able to do so very often this season. UConn is outrebounding its opponents by 2.5 boards per game, a tolerable number unless you have a history of dominating that statistic and seemingly have the height and strength to do so again.

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Rebounding, especially on the defensive end, isn't just about limiting an opponent's opportunities to score. For UConn, it's about jump-starting an offense that has occasionally sputtered this season.

"When we rebound, we're able to run," guard Jerome Dyson said. "That's when we're playing our best, when we're outrebounding the other team and able to get out on the break."

Beilein's team had trouble corralling rebounds against the likes of Utah (41-25), Boston College (43-32) and Alabama (41-26), leading to some early non-conference losses.

"We're really going to have to box out," Beilein said. "We've got a couple guys who will box out 99 percent of the time."

DeShawn Sims, who at 6-8 is Michigan's tallest starter, leads the team in rebounding by pulling down 7.1 per game. He will be at a height disadvantage today, though it's nothing new for the senior from Detroit.

"I definitely play better against bigger guys and I'm not afraid to go up against bigger guys," Sims said.

Michigan was ranked 15th in the preseason rankings, but has faltered slightly. UConn is currently ranked 15th, though it will surely fall out of the poll with a loss this afternoon. It's not clear who needs a win more today.

"Losing two in a row, we definitely need a game to get the momentum going back in our favor," Dyson said. "And it would be really good for the younger guys to experience a win on the road."